Which DTD Statement To Use?
There is not just one type of HTML, there are actually
many: HTML 4.01 Strict, HTML 4.01 Transitional, XHTML
1.0 Strict, and many more. All these HTML types are defined in their respective W3C specifications,
but they are also defined in a machine-readable language
specifying the legal structure, elements and attributes
of a type of HTML.
Such a definition is called a "Document Type Definition",
or, for short, DTD.
Tools which process HTML documents, such as Web browsers,
need to know which DTD an (X)HTML document is actually
using: this is why each (X)HTML document needs, at
the beginning, a DTD declaration, such as:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Given its syntax, the DTD declaration is often called,
for short, "Doctype".
Why specify a doctype? Because it defines which version
of (X)HTML your document is actually using, and this
is a critical piece of information needed by browsers
or other tools processing the document such as search engine spiders.
But the most important thing is that with most families
of browsers, a doctype declaration will make a lot
of guessing unnecessary, and will thus trigger a "standard" parsing
mode, where the understanding (and, as a result, the
display) of the document is not only faster, it is
also consistent and free of any bad surprise that documents
without doctype will create.
HTML 4.01 - Strict, Transitional, Frameset:
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
XHTML 1.0 - Strict, Transitional, Frameset:
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
For more information on DTD and
Doctype statements visit W3c.org
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